


Interlude: Enemy of my Enemy

by insominia



Series: Slow Burning Adventures in Mutual Pining between a Railroad Loyalist and a Brotherhood Synth [4]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, there's a lot of tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 13:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18235679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insominia/pseuds/insominia
Summary: Danse doesn't appreciate the people Nate has to work with to infiltrate the Institute. Especially when they fly so brazenly in the face of everything the Brotherhood represents. But Nate seems to be drifting closer to them, further from Danse and whatever it is they have between them, something they were just about on the cusp of acknowledging. Perhaps.





	Interlude: Enemy of my Enemy

The wasteland, by definition, was wasted. Nowhere more so than the so-called Glowing Sea, a name Paladin Danse hadn’t truly come to understand until night had fallen and at the height of a radstorm, the air flooded with radiated particles that lit up brighter than his power armour’s headlamp. It was quiet here, but not suspiciously so. Anywhere else in the Commonwealth such silence would be indicative of an ambush, not so here where you could see for miles in any direction in clear weather, all the way to Diamond City and beyond, hell even as far as the Prydwen docked on the other side of Boston. Here the silence was just that, _silent_. Even though they were not all that deep into the most irradiated area in the Commonwealth, just about skirting the border, really, but still. The silence was as true here as it was further in.

It had been more than a week, less than two since Danse had stood here for the first time. Well, _almost_ here, Nate had been stood on this spot, staring out across the expanse with undisguised awe.

“ _Something wrong, knight_?”

Nate had turned to Danse, he could sense the Paladin’s frown even through the heavy power armour helmet, but with a grin, he’d said, “ _Is it wrong that I think this place is beautiful?_ ”

“ _Very_ ,” Danse had snapped, failing to see the appeal of the place. Granted, the radiation was not even close to the levels they’d been led to expect. The way everyone had gone on about it, they’d half expected to explode into nuclear dust the moment they crossed the borderlands. Instead, it was mostly background radiation, spiking in fairly obvious areas of fallout. Inside their suits the two soldiers were fine and Nate had discarded his helmet early on, choosing to look around the place with his own eyes and popping a rad-x when the occasion called for it. But beyond that, what was there? Devastation on a scale that made the capital wasteland look hospitable. The trees were charred and blighted, lending an almost monochromatic veil to what had once been woodland. Most of the buildings had sunk into the ground and there was wildlife everywhere. Wildlife that had been well nourished on a supercharged diet of radiation and those idiotic followers of Atom, but on the plus side that just meant that the glowing alpha deathclaws were visible at a fair distance. If that could be considered a plus.

But Nate had loved it. Not just liked, _loved_. It showed in the lilt of his voice, the twitch of his smile, it was downright disconcerting. But he relished the silence, the actual silence of the place. The way the crepuscular rays broke through an otherwise dull sky had enchanted him, the fact that he could see all the way to Diamond City was possibly the most excited Danse had ever seen him until night had fallen and they’d seen the way the City had lit up. _That_ was the most excited Danse had ever seen him. He even appreciated the clarity of distance between themselves and anything that might harm them and had spend an irritating amount of time watching a deathclaw in the distance, simply because he could.

It had been more than a week, less than two. They had left and come back and were leaving again and still Danse didn’t see the appeal.

He heard steps behind him, and even though he recognised them as Nate’s he still spun around, his laser rifle tucked under his arm by the time he had levelled out. His finger was lax on the trigger though and as expected, it was Nate. He had left his power armour inside, there was a station at the bottom of the military facility they were using as a temporary camp and the radiation wasn’t so bad around here. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to say the least that the knight should choose to wander around such a place in little more than a jumpsuit, even if they had secured the area. Nate raised his hand as he approached, there was a bottle of purified water in his other hand and what looked like a tube of potato chips, but Danse turned his back to him and returned to keep a lookout.

Nate was apparently unruffled and sat on a rock beside the paladin, resting the water and food, if it could be called that, on the ground for Danse.

“Still angry with me, huh?” Nate muttered after the silence stretched out between them and it became clear Danse wasn’t going to break it.

“I’m not angry,” Danse snapped, making a poor show of it.

“You haven’t said more than two words in a week, are we going to talk about this?”

Danse sighed and rolled his eyes, glad to be fully suited in his power armour. The barrier between them was a lifesaver at times like these, Danse didn’t want Nate to see him angry, or at least, he didn’t want him to see his face when he explained _why_ he was angry. Danse was too straight forward a man to make a good liar.

When the paladin responded he chose his words carefully, deliberately, keeping his tone as even as he could. He sounded almost robotic through the helmet. “It has been a... _difficult_ week.”

“Difficult?” Nate sounded surprised, “we took down a courser, we got his chip, we have a way into the Institute and we have schematics to build a thing that will get us in there. Frankly, it’s been one of the best weeks we’ve had in a long time.”

“Quite. And all it took was working with super mutants, ghouls, synths and those lunatics to get here,” Danse added, bitterly.

“Ok, firstly,” Nate started, not bothering to keep the indignation from his tone, “those _lunatics_ analysed the chip for us, something no one else could have done and Virgil-”

“is an abomination!”

“He’s an experiment gone wrong, one that we’re going to fix!”

“We shouldn’t be fixing him, we should be putting a bullet in his brain! Just like you should have put down that synth in the tower.”

“Jenny?”

“That’s not her name,” Danse hissed, turning to glower down at Nate, though in this instance his helmet was more a hindrance as the knight couldn't see his expression. “She doesn’t even have a name, she has a designation. She’s not human! You should have killed her and you should kill the mutant.”

Nate started kicking at the ground absently, “Danse, the mutant is doing his best to get us into the Institute and as far as we know he’s the only one who can help us. If I kill him I lose the one chance I get at finding my son.”

“I know,” Danse sighed, “that’s why I haven’t done the job myself. But I don’t have to like it.”

For a moment there was another silence, an almost thoughtful one before Nate said, quietly, “I know. Thank you.”

Danse sighed quietly, this time in relief, glad that Nate didn’t hear him. He’d gotten away with it. He’d once been told that the best way to lie was to dress it in half a truth, and it _was_ true that Danse was angry at flying in the face of Brotherhood values so brazenly. It was even more irritating to know that Elder Maxson signed off on it, to compromise their traditions in favour of locating the Institute. Tactically it made perfect sense, practically it was grating, to say the least.

But that wasn’t what was bothering him, not really. It was the way he and Nate had been getting closer, inexorably so, until Nate had shown a side of him Danse hadn’t seen before. A side he could rationalise as disliking because it conflicted with the Brotherhood when _really_ he hated it because he thought they were closer than that. Not that anything had changed between them, they were still dancing around each other, or maybe it was just Danse who was dancing, unable to gauge whether Nate was actually interested in the paladin or whether it was all in his head. He was really bad at reading signals.

The two of them had been like orbiting stars these last few months. Always drawn around each other, but never getting too close. Danse feared if they were to touch then the resulting conflagration would consume them both and from the way, he would sometimes catch the knight looking at him, he knew they were already dangerously close to burning.

Physically, nothing had changed but emotionally Danse had put space between them that could rival the grand canyon, and Nate knew it, even if he didn't understand it. Danse had tried to impart the ideals of the Brotherhood onto the knight, of course, he had, that was his job. But it was more than that. If he was going to express an interest in another person then that person would have to be Brotherhood. That person would have to be willing to lay down their life for the cause and he knew Nate would do it without question, or at least he _had_ done. But now he was helping a super mutant, he was going to _cure_ the super mutant. He’d let that synth go, he’d berated Danse for not calling her by her preferred name, as though a machine was capable of such distinction. He’d sauntered into Railroad HQ and blended in easily, _too_ easily, and when he’d told their leader that he would give his life for a synth, well, he hadn’t sounded like he was joking. Granted, it was the kind of thing he'd have to say to gain their trust but they knew he was Brotherhood, they had surely not expected such a thing, he didn't have to lie to them. But the way he'd helped Jen- _the synth_ , that lent itself to the truth of the matter. Even if it had been a lie it was jarring to hear and now Danse felt like a fool. He felt as though he’d been rejected before anything had even started and now Nate was beside him, looking up at him waiting for him to speak and not even the power armour felt like barrier enough between them as the heat seemed to rise.

“I thought-” Nate started, but he didn’t finish, dropping his gaze to the floor as he felt Danse retreat from him, Danse had been beating a hasty retreat for a week now, retreating from Nate, from whatever _this_ was between them. He waited to see if the paladin was going to say anything, but he was silent. There was no way that Danse could inch closer to the knight, not without his power armour giving the movement away, so he remained still, as though his heart wasn’t beating so heavily in his chest the rumble might attract a radscorpion. “It doesn’t matter,” Nate spat, unexpectedly, and Danse was surprised at the venom in his voice. Nate was on his feet now, stalking back to the shack that disguised the facility they were bunking at. “I mean, it’s not like fraternisation is permitted within units anyway,” he growled, leaving Danse behind, far behind.

Danse didn’t let out the breath he was holding until the hatch of the bunker clanged shut and he returned his gaze to the wasteland, resuming his patrol, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling in his gut. He had the distinct impression he’d messed up, though what he had messed up eluded him. He wanted to run his hand through his hair, this was exhausting. He should just stalk in there after him and kiss him until neither of them could see straight. Then at least they would know where they stood. Or would they? Danse groaned, did he even want to anymore, given recent developments?

In the distance a radstorm was brewing, he could see it drifting across the glowing sea, parallel to them so they didn’t have to worry about it. The sun was shining on Danse, seemingly clearer down here than anywhere else and the light remains of rain were starting to pick their way gently to the ground. Across the plains, Danse watched the clouds roll and saw the flash of radiation ripple through the atmosphere. Begrudgingly he admitted that actually, it was all quite pretty.


End file.
